


Wormwood, Petal, Skull of Feline

by Laiska



Category: Black Knight Sword
Genre: Gen, Mild Gore, Surreal horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-22
Updated: 2018-09-22
Packaged: 2019-07-15 17:46:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16068158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Laiska/pseuds/Laiska
Summary: The wormwood sways in the wind. The poisoned flower promises.My mistress offers me her blade. Joyfully, desperately, I accept.





	Wormwood, Petal, Skull of Feline

    The boughs creak and shudder. I taste absinthe on my lips.

    The stage sways beneath my feet, an undulating platform, pulling me deep into a world that teems with death. Muscles tremble—my body writhes, tense with poison. Though my eyes go dark... what are these visions that I see?

    The maiden.

    Her sword proffered to me, the maiden beckons. _Come_ , say her eyes, _take the power that is rightly yours_.

    The power? _Yes_ , power was always mine by divine right. The Hellebore smiles.

    I fall deeper still into the scene. What mysteries now dance before my blindness?

    A pantomime of a city under siege, the silent screams of the innocent pouring through the spreading flame. The grotesque, the undead, haunt its streets—fantastical beings, tainted by corruption. To challenge me, to challenge my blade? My maiden would never allow it. Kiss of the Hellebore upon them. A kiss that cures, a kiss that kills.

    Their blood splashes over my armour, my brittle shell, in its hungry pitch black. Desirous this carapace, it melds to my skin. The roots pierce deep, the tendrils thick. Though the orchestra strikes to herald my doom, driven by a conductor wild, invisible, my soul knows no pain.

    Temptations lurk in abundance, swaying the sure path before me. Towers of gold and towers of ruin. But none are as lovely as she.

    The curtains fall and rise again. What horrors will await me in the next scene? The darkness ebbs and flows.

    Mistress Hellebore and her ebon eyes, she taunts me.

    A gleaming city sits on the rise, defended by a noble knight, all rot within his shell. A sun sets blood-red on a forest, where companies of wolves hunt with abandon. A shape blots out the moon, a sorrowful howl from teeth that gnash. A labyrinth below with defenders gone awry, a flood that washes the catacombs clean–

_Have you paid the dead ferryman? Or will your wretched soul be doomed to linger?_

    The city sleeps in daytime, host to a carnival of ghosts, their sick bell choir ringing as we ascend to the shining precipice. She shimmers, an affront to the fire-breathing god. I feel her in my hand, on my body. Her whispers? She is silent, but I hear love sung from her porcelain face.

    Any moment, it could end. The curtain could drop without warning. The sandbags fall. The crew is crushed. The star of the show by his neck, aloft, dangling over an abyss.

    But he, but I, shall rise again. For her I fight, for it is by her power I am born, I am _borne_. The petals grant a raven's wings. Ah, to soar! Above the cityline, visiting destruction with those plumes. The flamebound god is only her surrogate now, gifting power when she spurns me. Yet even spurned and abused, my sublime Hellebore I shall never begrudge.

    For none is as lovely as she.

    Droning voices resound through thick pines. Days pass, after day, after night, on the arid horizon, shadows dancing behind a migration of skulls. Rusted steels revs from afar. There are places where we must not go. People who we must not see, never touch, lest the very dignity that gilds us be tarnished. _Destroy this land_ , I beg to the universe, the directors of this one-night run. _Destroy it now_. With missile strike, with hellfire burn, and wash the land of these cretins who will never know her love, who will never _deserve_ the vision of her beauty. Not as I do.

_Do I?_

    The eyes of children flash before me in anticipation, thinking this but fairytale. Do they know that such tales are cautions, meant to frighten? There is no moral here, no pleasantries. Sweet dreams will not dance in their head tonight. They will taste no sugar plums, but if they wish they will dine on candied hearts. A rotting banquet, shoved into their putrid mouths until they gorge themselves full, and the blood runs from their split bellies. God's fire shall rain down from above. Spiders will dance in their dollhouses.

    Mechanical soldiers will raid their homes, and I will not be there to stop them. I hunt only for my mistress, her quarry so close before me, atop the final rise. Empty praise heralds my climb, but the words of an announcer will not sate me the way she does. My eyes glint as my body moulders.

    My mistress titters, my mistress spits and shrieks. Soldier and sinner, I am bound in her service. I will know when the moment comes, and I feel the blade's hunger for the pale blood of she, the curse in ivory, stark on the stage before us. She is greater than this room's four walls, but my maiden is greater still.

_–Veratrum album–_

    I will duel the renders of flesh, and clattering skeletons. I will vanquish the rotting corpse and the spring-loaded horror. I will combat the machine man, and the ravenous beast. I will war with the white knight amongst the stars.

    For my love, I will fight puppet and puppeteer. I shall sacrifice my body, my being, every fragment of my essence. I shall give until my wood is nothing more than splinters, and I am pressed into the planks on which the fools of next century walk, their forms wrenched to tell of my legend, until I am forgotten, like bone shard ground into mud.

    And I shall cherish every moment. I shall accept the punishment for my deeds, and I shall relish it. All that I am, all that I was, and all that I shall ever be, is dust upon the Hellebore's blossoms, is nourishment for the worms that knead the dirt beneath her roots, is the young girl who seizes and cries as she consumes the bane.

    And I will give this all with glee. I would give it a thousand times more.

    The maiden stands before me, and offers me the blade. I will grip the handle, and smile my stiffened smile.

    With my soul, become the agent of her rapture.

    With my body, extol her praises.

    For none is as lovely as she.

 _None is_ ever _as lovely as she._

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written for the [Grasshopper Manufacture Zine](https://gumroad.com/ghmzine).
> 
> My lovely gf worked on a [companion piece](https://twitter.com/TsubakiMkII/status/1043634174282760192), as well!


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